"It was probably one of the Asgard," General Hammond assured him. "Jack is our ambassador to them and that was what their transport beam usually looks like."
"Asgard?" Xander asked, surprised. "As in Loki and Thor?"
"Yes... But the myths and legends are somewhat... Inaccurate," General Hammond said.
"The Asgardians tried to extend their life through the use of cloning technology," Danny explained with a sad shake of his head. "Making a copy of a copy introduces errors..."
"Yeah, that's why you only make copies from the original body which you keep in stasis. It only takes a single cell to make a clone so you'd get bored of life long before you ran out of useable DNA," Xander said, not seeing the problem because if you were smart enough to clone yourself you had to be smart enough to keep the original on file as any grade school teacher could tell you.
"They didn't do that," Danny admitted with a frown, wondering why no one had thought of that before.
"So... They all mutated?" Xander guessed.
"Heavily," General Hammond said.
There was a flash of light and Jack was suddenly in the hall with them as well as...
"A Roswell Grey?" Xander asked in disbelief.
"Greetings," the big headed gray alien said, "I am Thor of Asgard."
"I think you've lost some weight," Xander said without thinking about it, comparing the figure he'd seen sketches of in various conspiracy shows to his knowledge of what he expected Thor to look like.
"Any way you can help with that?" Jack asked hopefully.
"Maybe," Xander said, extending a hand to the small gray alien.
Thor curiously extended his hand for Xander to shake.
Xander closed his eyes as he held his hand. "Four colorless... Great intellect, decent amount of wisdom... Common sense is a tad low," he released his hand. "Jack, press the green ring against him and will it to heal him."
"That will work?" Jack asked, surprised.
"No idea, but it'll let us know if you can heal others with it and I'll simply cast regeneration on him directly if it doesn't work," Xander said.
"I am not injured, my DNA is degraded from what it once was," Thor explained. "Even a sarcophagus such as the Goa'uld use would have no positive effect."
"This is conceptual healing," Xander said, "it ignores the laws of physics."
"Pardon?" Thor asked, his large pupilless black eyes blinking in confusion.
"The things I do are outside your frame of reference," Xander explained, deciding not to say 'it's magic I don't got to explain shit' no matter how true it was. "Jack?"
Jack held out his hand, showing Thor the green emerald ring. "Please touch the green stone."
Thor placed his hand over Jack's who closed his eyes right before the little gray being shot up gaining several feet in height, his form shifting and reddish blonde hair spurting from his head and face. "Unbelievable," he said in shock.
"Why do my clothes feel tight?" Jack asked, making some adjustments to his suddenly too small clothes.
"Huh," Xander said. "Looks like it has enough power to regenerate you both at once. It could probably heal more than two, but we'd have to test it."
"I am restored," Thor said with a wide smile and a booming voice, the only thing differentiating him from a human being being his slightly larger pitch black eyes and his unnaturally long fingers, each possessing an extra joint.
"And pantsless," Jack noted as he tried and failed to adjust himself so his pants were comfortable. "General, mind if I go find a pair of sweatpants?"
"Go ahead, then stop by medical for a checkup," General Hammond ordered.
Jack winced. "I'll let them know to schedule me for a new baseline as soon as we have time."
"Excuse me for a moment as well," Thor said before vanishing in a burst of light.
"So the Norse gods were aliens here," Xander said, shaking his head. "I did not see that coming."
"The Asgard are our allies," General Hammond said, "being able to heal them will go a long way to repaying the debt we owe them for safeguarding Earth."
"I'll have to make a dozen green rings for that too," Xander decided.
"That's very generous of you," General Hammond said. "I can see that it takes some effort and you can't just wave a hand and create a table full of them like you did with the food."
Xander froze for a second and then facepalmed. "I'm an idiot," he said.
"What? Can you just wave a hand and create a table full of them?" General Hammond asked.
"Yes and no," Xander said. "I have been using as much energy to make each ring as I have to charge them when I could use the same amount of energy to create a table full. They aren't special rings or anything, so I've been doing twice as much work as I had to."
"Well at least you know that now," General Hammond offered.
"Yeah," Xander agreed, "I just feel really stupid when I fall into the habit of doing something without thinking about it and then realize I'm needlessly limiting myself."
"I can't say I've ever had that particular problem, but don't beat yourself up over not being perfect," General Hammond said. "The only unforgivable mistake is to fail to learn from them."
Xander perked up. "That does make me feel better." He tapped a Mana and created a leather duster with pockets filled with emerald rings before taking one out and pushing Mana into it. A quick check showed it was a decent Mox Emerald or at least it was like all the others he'd created as he was sure he was still doing something wrong when he made them.
Danny absently accepted the ring and stuffed it in his pocket before returning to the sketch he was making of Thor.
There was a flash of light and Thor reappeared, dressed in a black outfit with gold trim that actually bared a fair resemblance to the ones worn in Star Trek, being more a colored body stocking than a military uniform. "I've returned," he announced grandly with a wide smile. "It's been centuries since I've felt this deeply. I had no idea the cloning process had numbed my emotions to such an extent."
"Depression was probably part of it," Xander guessed. "I mean, going from that to... what you were, has to suck."
Thor nodded. "Truer words were never spoken. While I will miss the extended life span... I think I will forgo cloning from here on out. Can you help my brothers as you've assisted me?"
"Sure," Xander agreed as he charged another green ring and passed it to Danny who tried to stick it in a pocket but found himself with no room.
"What?" Danny asked in disbelief as he realized he had all his pockets filled with Mox Emerald rings.
Xander burst out laughing and the newly returned Jack snickered, arriving just in time for the payoff of the prank.
"I..." Danny just stared in disbelief.
"Totally worth it," Xander said as he charged a ring and handed it to Thor. "Every sunrise it recharges and can be used to restore at least two of your people who are touching it to what they should be and you don't need to stop cloning, you just have to keep your original body in stasis and only make clones from it. You can use the rings to repair cloning damage if you lose the original to make a new one or just to insure you have a safe backup to clone from."
"That would have been the wiser option than what we chose," Thor said, sliding the ring on his finger, "but that's what happens when you let your hubris decide your path."
"Here," Danny said, handing Thor half a dozen rings, "this should speed up your people's recovery."
"Let's take this to one of the meeting rooms... if we can find one," General Hammond said with a frown.
Five Minutes Later
Everyone settled into their chairs around the circular ebony table.
"These chairs are comfy," Jack said with some surprise, "and the plush carpeting is a nice touch."
Xander shrugged. "Yeah, my power is kinda useful that way."
"I completely forgot to ask," Jack said, turning to Thor, "why did you stop by? Not that it's not nice to have you."
"Just checking in to see if you were okay and see if you'd stumbled across any more Ancient super weapons," Thor replied with a chuckle. "My people are still battling the replicators and we've reached a stalemate which favors the immortal machines over a stagnated population."
Xander created a bag of sapphire rings and pulled one out of it, charging with Mana before sliding it across the table to Thor. "Temporarily boosts your brain, which will probably help you solve whatever problem you're working on."
Sam's eyes locked on Xander with an almost audible snap, making him lean a bit away from her, worried she might leap across the table and devour him. He quickly charged another sapphire ring and almost threw it at her.
Sam snatched the ring out of the air so quickly if you had blinked you would have missed it.
"How do you activate it?" Thor asked as he slid the ring on his left hand.
"Just will it to work," Xander replied, keeping a cautious eye on Sam as she closed her eyes and activated her own.
"Oh," Thor said, black pupilless eyes widening. "The solution is so simple..."
"I need my lab," Sam said suddenly, standing up and grabbing Thorin, almost dragging him from the room, Celeste hurrying after them.
"You have a solution?" Jack asked Thor.
He grinned widely. "Indeed I do. We have the blueprints for the replicators, we simply have to make our own and overwhelm them with numbers. Well, that and hit them with some gravitaic pulses to soften them up and disrupt their network connection."
"It's always the obvious solutions you overlook," Jack said sarcastically.
"Just like your control module is always in the last place you look," Thor agreed cheerfully. "You may just have saved my race," he told Xander, "...again. Name a boon and if I can grant it, it shall be yours."
"Keep protecting the Earth and we're cool," Xander told him.
"I'd station a dozen ships here if we had them to spare," Thor said. "I believe we should be able to deal enough damage to the replicators to get at least a couple permanently stationed here within a couple of months. I hope that will suffice until we have more to spare, though finding Asgardians to command them may be a little tricky."
Xander grinned. "I may be able to help you with that."
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Jack just stared at Xander once they'd beamed back down.
"What?" Xander asked.
"Your powers are complete bullshit, you know that, right?"
"Yes, yes they are," Xander agreed. "Want some more superpowers?"
"Got anything to help me deal with trees?" Jack asked hopefully.
"I actually do," Xander said, "but why trees?"
"Any time we go through the Stargate and there's trees everywhere something goes wrong," Jack replied.
"How'd things go?" General Hammond asked.
"Well sir," Jack said with a happy grin, "there are now six O'Neill class Asgardian ships guarding Earth commanded by... close relatives of Thor."
"I sent the other six with Thor to help resolve their problems faster," Xander said.
"Truthfully three of them is overkill for anything the Goa'uld could do," Jack said. "Earth is... safe."
"I think a couple of them are planning on terraforming Mars," Xander said. "They like to keep busy."
General Hammond smiled. "That is great news."
"How... did you create more Asgardian ships and... Asgardians?" Danny asked, shocked.
"Male and female along with trickster spirits, which remind me a lot of the Nox if they weren't so solemn and had a sense of humor," Jack said thoughtfully.
"I didn't want them to get bored and apparently they really like to party," Xander said, ignoring Danny's question as rhetorical since he knew Xander could create spaceships and crew at will.
"Yeah, they only got stodgy and boring after the whole cloning thing," Jack agreed.
"You really weren't kidding when you talked about causing chaos, were you?" General Hammond asked as an airman delivered a stack of files for him to go through.
"I really wasn't," Xander agreed.
"So... About those powers?" Jack asked hopefully.
Typing By: Abyssal Angel
Beta By: Abyssal Angel and Mist of Shadows
